There had been that time Teresa McKnight discovered catfish swimming in her kitchen sink.

There was only one explanation for such a peculiarity: her insatiably curious, intrepid fisherman son Jakeob had once again gone to his favorite pond on the Bear Valley Greenbelt in Lakewood only a mile from their apartment.

In the summer of 1991, Jakeob, a sandy-haired, blue-eyed boy, was 10. The bright, artistic Bear Creek Elementary School student had just completed the fourth grade and was about a month away from starting the fifth.

Teresa and her husband Gary, a trucker, had one other son, Josh, who was 12. The brothers got along well and spent a lot of time together. They often explored the greenbelt with other boys their age.

They weren’t the only ones who appreciated the public park’s grassy meadows, cool creek waters and large shade trees. The greenbelt has always been a popular place for joggers, bicyclists, Frisbee tossers, picnickers, fishermen, sunbathers and nature lovers.

Gary McKnight may have put it best when he described Jakeob’s zeal for fishing as “freakish” before the meaning of that word evolved to become a big compliment. His son was on a mission to surpass his dad’s tally of fish that summer.

If Jakeob was still living today, he’d be older than his father was back then in 1991, during Jakeob’s last summer.

The following story pieces together scores of newspaper reports of more than two dozen newspaper and TV reporters and photographers from the past 23 years including the work of former Denver Post reporter Mark Obmascik, the best-selling author of “The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession.” Where accounts differ I sometimes offer both versions.

I relied partly on the reporting of Jim Kirksey, a former long-time night shift reporter at The Denver Post. I had worked with Kirksey for several years until the end of his newspaper career in 2006. A few weeks after I began writing the Colorado Cold Cases blog in 2007, he recommended that I profile Jakeob’s case. Kirksey had written hundreds of stories about Colorado murders, many of which have not been solved. This is the one case he mentioned. I wrote a profile a few weeks later in January 2008. In the past seven years, more people have left comments about this case, including strangers who have described how deeply it affected them, than any of my other 250-plus cold case profiles.

This story is a much more in-depth version than the earlier one and encompasses milestones including one that hasn’t even happened yet. On Wednesday, July 25, 2014, a long-time suspect in Jakeob’s murder will be sentenced for an unrelated crime. This latest account updates the fate of another suspect, a man once acquitted of a murder charge, and mentions the role of a former sheriff, who was then nationally known and highly regarded, but is now behind bars himself.

Jakeob was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on Sept. 13, 1980. His family raised him mostly in Colorado, with a short span of time in Tennessee. The trusting boy was an extrovert, who liked people and was liked by many. His preferred domain was outdoors.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.